


The Manhattan Repetition

by 2ndA



Category: Stargate Atlantis, The Big Bang Theory (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-17
Updated: 2014-08-17
Packaged: 2018-02-13 13:39:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2152761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2ndA/pseuds/2ndA
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney McKay and John Sheppard are sent to recruit Leonard and Sheldon (and Penny) to an Atlantis-based project to save the universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Manhattan Repetition

**Author's Note:**

  * For [debirlfan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/debirlfan/gifts).



_"It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country."_

\- J. Robert Oppenheimer, on the Manhattan Project and the creation of nuclear weaponry

 

There are two men waiting outside Leonard’s apartment when he arrives, but the likelihood that they are there to see him is less than 20% (and who ever said that statistics were practically part of the humanities?). For one thing, he’s scheduled to be in a meeting for the Incoming Graduate Orientation work group; it was only cancelled at the last minute because Dr. Pham’s daughter was sent home sick from pre-school and the other committee members would rather skip a meeting entirely than have to even tangentially address the idea of family obligations in a professional setting. Secondly, the man sitting on the floor, his legs stretched out to take up most of the narrow hallway, is wearing combat boots. Leonard has spent a large part of his life strategizing to avoid having _anything to do_ with the sort of person who wears combat boots.

The other man, the one without combat boots, is shorter and stockier and much, much more pissed off. He is standing with his hands on his hips, flushed and scowling. “—Ok,” he announces to the apartment door, “I didn’t want it to come to this, but if you don’t open this door right this minute, I’m going to have to get…unorthodox.” The man vibrates with annoyance. “Do you have any idea what a Gou’ald mass particle re-arranger could do to this door?”

“Mass partic—ha! _ha!_ ” Sheldon shouts, theatrically, from within. “Those physics fairy-tales may amuse undergraduates, doctor McKay—if you really _are_ a doctor— _which I doubt_ —but they won’t get you anywhere with me. I remain the Galileo to your Pope Urban, the voice of reason to your nonsensical pseudo-science rambling...”

The stocky man looks like he's going to tear his hair out. “Does ‘end of terrestrial life as we know it’ mean _nothing_ to you?”

“La-la-la-la, _not listenin_ g,” Sheldon calls back.

The doctor has been pacing the narrow hallway, automatically stepping over Combat Boots, but now he stops. Leonard wishes he hadn’t: standing still, he has an eerie sort of gravity. It’s like the moment in a Nature Channel documentary right before the brown bear leaps into the salmon stream. That’s the part where Leonard always covers his eyes or gets up to use the bathroom; there’s a reason he studied physics and not biology. The man puts out a hand, palm up, and snaps impatiently.

Combat Boots rolls his eyes. “Really, Rodney, don’t you think it’s overkill to—”

“You said you’d let me handle the scientists, Major. And the General said any means necessary, did he not?” Major? Leonard lurks in the stairwell, listening. _General?_  

Boots sighs, rolls his eyes again, but he reaches into the knapsack at his side. And that’s when Leonard steps out of the shadows. Sometimes Leonard doesn’t even like Sheldon very much, but they are friends. Friends don’t let friends get mass partically re-arranged.

“Stop!” Leonard says. He shifts his shopping bags so his right hand is free. Doctor McKay—Rodney—just looks newly annoyed and Combat Boots doesn’t look surprised at all.  Could he have known Leonard was there the whole time? Was Leonard insufficiently stealthy? More importantly, even if there were such a thing as a Gou’ald mass particle re-arranger, would it really look like the low-budget sci-fi prop in Combat Boots’s hand?

“Yes?” Major Combat Boots raises an eyebrow.

Leonard means to say something to the effect that, indeed, friends don't let friends get partically re-arranged, but what comes out is, “Don't—I have a key. And we've already maxed out the security deposit.”

When the door swings open, Leonard sees Sheldon sitting in his usual place on the couch, with his knees pulled up to his chest and his hands over his eyes. He parts his fingers, peeking, and then unfolds himself. “See, I _knew_ you didn’t have a mass particle re-arranger and Lord is _that_ a stupid name. So you can go now, since I have been proved correct. Again.”

“Ford named it,” Combat Boots says, walking right past Leonard. “And when we leave, you’re coming with us.”

Sheldon looks affronted. “Well, I can categorically assure you _that’s_ not going to ha—”

“You can bring two bags,” the military guy cuts in laconically, like the decision has already been made and it’s just a matter of time until Sheldon agrees, “not to exceed 60 pounds, and one personal item.  I'm Major John Sheppard and this is my colleague, Rodney McKay.”

“ _Doctor_ Rodney McKay," the man puts in. “PhD."

“Leonard,” Sheldon announces, “I am being harassed. There was a department meeting about this…did you go to it?” Leonard is not sure whether to ask why Sheldon didn’t go to the (mandatory) meeting about workplace harassment or to explain that Sheldon is being head-hunted by the military, which is not quite the same as being harassed. Before he can decide, he hears Penny’s door open and close across the hallway.

“Hey, guys, d’you—oh, sorry, I didn’t realize you had people over. Is that what the shouting was about? I’m Penny.” Leonard can’t help but notice that she introduces herself to Major Tall, Dark and Handsome first. But then her attention jumps again, “Oh! You took my advice about the universal remote. Finally. Seriously, this is gonna change your li—”

The TV makes a sound like a car crashing at high speed when Penny points the mass particle re-arranger at it and clicks. It’s so loud that Leonard, Penny, and Sheldon all flinch and duck instinctively. The military guy shoves the doctor onto the ground and shields their heads…which is on balance, Leonard reflects, probably a more rational response to what sounds like a bomb going off.

It’s not really a bomb. There’s no actual explosion, in the sense of flames and flying debris. When Leonard moves his gaze from Penny’s shocked face, he sees a ring of grey dust, twisting and floating like heavy smoke above where the TV used to be. The barely-visible particles of a television set, Leonard realizes, now that all the primary molecular bonds have been broken...err, re-arranged. He can look right through the middle of the circle, see into the kitchen. The sound was all the energy lost when those bonds were broken. Every few seconds, the cloud emits a crackling sound, plainly audible in the silent room.

“Oh, Lord, Penny,” Sheldon huffs. “That was hardly necessary. Now I’m going to have to come over to your apartment to watch Doctor Who.”

Penny and Leonard are staring at what used to be the television. It’s only when Sheldon speaks that Leonard realizes the doctor and the military guy are also staring…at Penny.

“Thought you said it was perfectly safe, Rodney.” the military guy mumbles out of the side of his mouth, his eyes fixed on the remote in Penny’s hand. “ _Relax, Major, it can only be used by people with the gene, and where are we going to find one of those?_ ” Wasn’t that it, Rodney?”

“It can only be used by people with th….” the doctor, Rodney, trails into silence. His eyes, wide and blue, travel from Penny to the TV and back, full of wonder. When they alight on her, he says, almost a whisper, “Once is chance, twice is scientific method. Do it again.”

***

Combat Boots—or, as he prefers to be known, John Sheppard--closes the apartment door, produces a ream of non-disclosure forms, and after securing everyone’s signatures, explains that the world is about to end. For once, even Sheldon has nothing to say. Leonard looks at the papers before him. It’s the most complicated document he’s ever seen, including his university contract and Sheldon’s roommate agreement. He feels a little dizzy. His ears are still ringing from the…oh, God, the mass departicalization. It really happened. This is _all really happening_.

“I don’t understand,” Penny says at last, the only one of them willing to admit it. That’s when Rodney drags over Sheldon’s whiteboard and begins to diagram a series of things called stargates that connect Earth and planets light-years outside the Milky Way.

“Recently, something happened on one of the stargates, possibly in this region…” Rodney gestures with the stained dishtowel he used to wipe out all of Sheldon’s equations, “and the stargates have begun…well, it’s a little hard to explain. As nearly as we can figure there’s a—let’s call it a pressure vacuum, and it’s sort of….” He makes a sudden opening-closing gesture with his hands, as though trying to grasp something to ephemeral to touch.

“It’s sucking planets back through the stargates,” Sheldon says. “Matter is flowing to the area of least density. Simple physics.”

Rodney glares, “I’m sure I could see to making things more complicated.”

“And we have one of these, uh, gates here?” Trust Penny to get to the heart of the matter.

“Antarctica, yes.”

“So, Earth is eventually going to...?”  Penny opens her hand, closes it, lets it fall to her lap. 

“It’s not the first time there have been incidents on stargate planets,” Sheppard begins.

“Hey!” Rodney interrupts, “That was an _accident_ …”

“Don’t feel badly,” Sheldon adds, shaking his head. “Leonard once broke our elevator.”

“I can’t believe you choose now to bring that up!”

“ _Anyway,_ ” Sheppard talks over Leonard, “Other incidents— _which shall go unnamed_ —” he adds as Rodney opens his mouth to object, “but it is the first time—well, obviously—it’s the first time we’ve had a reaction quite like this.”

Suddenly, the broken elevator seems like a very small problem.

“Hmm…” Sheldon studies the whiteboard, then  stands up and takes the whiteboard marker from Rodney’s hand. He jots an equation on the board, something about reversing the polarity of an magnetic field and—oh, hmm, Leonard has to admit that’s not a bad idea, not bad at all. Sheldon finishes with a smug flourish. “Have you tried something like—”

“Of course we have; we’re rocket scientists, not your California undergraduates!” Rodney snaps.

Sheldon glares. “My apologies. How about…” more numbers, a few Greek letters.

“Yup. Tried that.”

Sheldon scribbles some more. Rodney sighs. “And that. And…well, naturally, that was the first thing we thought of.”

They go back and forth, Sheldon writing equations and Rodney dismissing them. It’s like the geek version of Dueling Banjos. Penny, Leonard, and Sheppard watch the volley like fans at Wimbledon.“

“And that. And—well, not exactly, but for all intents and purposes... And—oh, Doctor Cooper, we’re professionals, please, of course we tried that.”

“Ok, well then,” Sheldon caps the marker and settles back onto the couch. “There’s only one possible solution: we’re all doomed.”

“Sheldon!” Penny wails.

“Penny!” He mimics. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t think of any other possible outcome. And if I can’t think of any, and if we postulate that we exist in a post-Newtonian universe, which I think we can all agree on, it is probably time to make peace with whatever fictional sky-creature you choose to believe in.”

“Don’t joke about sky creatures,” Sheppard mutters.

“Well, I'm sorry you came all this way for nothing,” Sheldon says, standing up. “Best of luck.  Leonard, do you want to order Indian or Chinese?”

“Sheldon!”

“What, Penny?  Don't you like Chinese?”

“Sheldon, the world is ending!”

“So?”

“ _So?!_   So, _do something_ with that giant brain of yours!”

“Penny, as I believe I have explained before, brain-size does not actually correlate to intelli—”

“Can I just—excuse me, can I just finish what I was saying?” Sheppard interrupts, "I said that there hasn’t been another time when we were facing exactly this threat, but once upon a time, a group of scientists got together in a remote, protected location to solve a different kind of problem.”

“ _Once upon a time?_ You’re taking your lead from history instead of the sciences?” Sheldon yelps. “We really are doomed!”

“That’s just what I said,” Rodney stage whispers, giving Sheldon an approving look.

“Are you two completely finished?” Sheppard’s glare actually silences whatever Sheldon was about to say. He waits until he has their attention (Leonard has to forcibly keep his eyes from darting toward the spinning cloud that used to be the TV). “Ok, listen up, kids. In the 1940’s, the US and its allies, Canada and Great Britain, began recruiting scientists and shipping them off to New Mexico, the high desert. It was about as far from either coast as you could get, so it would be the last place to fall regardless of who invaded. Chemists, engineers, every kind of physicist, pilots, guys who built model planes—put them all in contact with each other to pool what they knew and solve a problem.”

“The Manhattan project,” breathes Sheldon, newly interested. “I once had a cat named Robert Oppenheimer.”

“I had a cat, too,” Rodney chimes in. “Named Chester.”

“The Manhattan Project built a _bomb_!” Leonard reminds them, sounding just a little hysterical.

“Well, it’s not an exact comparison,” Sheppard holds up his hands, making soothing motions. “For one thing, our project is a lot bigger. And much, much farther away.”

***

Sheppard and Rodney request a copy of the apartment lease (“wow, this is a very, uh, elaborate—” “Naturally; I wrote the roommate agreement myself. ”) They also get the keys, Leonard’s car registration, and contact information for the university. Sheppard say that everyone will get a chance to video-chat ( _through time-space, through time-space_ , Leonard has to put his head between his knees and concentrate on breathing deeply) with their families “from the installation,” but that there is a division “to handle”—Sheppard jingles Sheldon’s office keys on their (completed) Rubix cube keychain—“this sort of thing.”

“I’m only sorry I won’t be around to appreciate Doctor Leiner’s inconsolable shame and abject apologies when she realizes that I was right about the syllabus policy,” Sheldon sighs nostalgically. “Also, tell everyone that I get the same office when I return. I know there’s mold in the others and I have a very sensitive system. In fact, they should probably just retire my office number. I understand that is a typical mark of esteem in some anthropological groups.”

“Like…sports fans?” Sheppard suggests.

Sheldon looks up coyly from under his eyelashes, unwilling to admit that he knows anything about sports. “Perhaps.”

Hearing Sheldon being snobby is so normal that it settles Leonard’s stomach. Really, the fact that this is all so well-planned should give him confidence. Clearly, this group, this Stargate Command, has considered the fall-out—abandoned apartments, curious coworkers, professional obligations. They’re experienced, they have a whole division for this. For this sort of thing. Leonard lifts his head…just in time to see Sheppard casually dump the lease and the Physics department email tree into a filefolder pre-labeled “Earth Extraction.” _Oh, God, oh, God_ —deep breaths.

“Also,” Sheldon ignores Leonard’s gasps, “I want Penny as my personal object.”

Penny once gave Howard two black eyes for trying to kiss her; Leonard wonders what she’ll do to Sheldon for presuming she’s an object. Her reaction is almost more surprising than anything else he’s seen all day.

“Oh, Sheldon,” Penny finally pulls her eyes from the spinning debris of the TV, “that’s very sweet, honey.”

“Yes, yes, nice gesture,” Rodney mumbles absently, rapidly writing out more file folder labels, “but unnecessary. Your neighbor will be traveling on her own merits.”

“Oh, thank God!” Sheldon sags in relief.  “Now, I'll have room for my Leonard Nimoy napkin!”

From his position staring at the carpet and taking deep breaths, Leonard hears them all moving across the hall (“…And how do you spell your last name?” Rodney is asking Penny). On the coffee table in front of him is Sheldon’s copy of the lease. Due to its length—47 pages including footnotes and references—Sheppard had taken only Leonard’s copy. Now Leonard flips through to page 34, subsection 4a. Amidst questions about time-travel and laundry schedules, he finds the last what he’s looking for. _In a post-apocalyptic world,_ Sheldon had asked when Leonard first moved in, _to which task would you assign the highest priority? Locating a sustainable food source, re-establishing a functioning government, procreating, or preserving the knowledge of mankind?_

***

In the end, Sheldon’s personal item is not the Leonard Nimoy napkin. It’s not his special edition Green Lantern comic book or the tattered copy of _Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper_ that he's had since he was eight. When Sheldon goes through the stargate—protesting and insulting all the way—he brings the cushion from the apartment couch. “My spot,” he explains to a puzzled scientist who greets him on the other side. “It took me a long time to find it, and then I had to promise Howard my entire Lord of the Rings special edition box set—with additional special features discs _and_ the action figures—before he’d let me borrow it back.”

The scientist, confused, nods and waves Sheldon off the reception platform so he doesn’t hold up the entire incoming contingent of new experts, the chemists and physicists and metallurgists and anthropologists who are coming to be part of this new Manhattan Project, to pool their knowledge and save their universe.

Leonard had gone to science camp at the local community college when he’d been a kid, and he’d loved it. It had been the first time he hadn’t been the odd one out, when his interests and enthusiasm had made him popular rather than freakish. That summer science camp that made him decide to be a professor—he figured if Los Rios Community College Summer Summer Science-athon had been so wonderful, a real science department at a real university would be like paradise. His extrapolation was a little inflated (not for the first time, as Sheldon would remind him). University work involved a lot of politics and meetings and professional sniping. But Atlantis is bright people sharing information to fix something real. It's like science camp to the power of ten. 

Every morning, Leonard wakes with his mind teeming with so many ideas that he has to write them down. He usually passes Sheldon (standing at Penny’s door chanting _Penny! Penny!_ because she locks it with _her mind_ ) on the way to breakfast.  Once there, he and Zelenka talk over each other before heading to the lab. Sheldon insists on personally delivering all missives from the theoretical physics division, so he interrupts at least four times before lunch.  At night, Leonard and Penny often meet up for dinner in the cafeteria.  She asks what he's been doing all day, and he says, “Science stuff.”  And then they talk about other things: what Athosian not-cherry really tastes like; what Howard is doing at this moment, back on earth; whether Raj, whom they'd run into on the first day in Atlantis, newly come through the stargate himself, has a chance with that botanist who had been flirting with him.

“Penny?”  Leonard has had something on his mind, more so since the failure of their latest attempts to slow down the stargate collapse.

“Hmm?”

“Why didn't you yell at Sheldon for wanting to bring you as his personal object?”

“Oh, hon, he was trying to do something nice...trying in his usual Sheldon fashion,” Penny smiles ruefully.

“It won't happen, the getting-sucked-into-the-stargate thing, you know.  You would've been fine on Earth.  _Everyone_ on Earth is going to be fine,” Leonard assures her, more confidently than he feels. The stargate collapse is increasing, the pressure differential growing more extreme.

“I don't think he was worried just about me.”

“Penny?”

“Yeah, Leonard?”

“Sheldon loaned me the hard drive with all his old Doctor Who episodes on it.  Wanna watch?”

***

On the way back to Leonard's room—Penny smoothly opening and closing doors as they walk through them—they pass the northwest fifth-tier balcony.  Outside, Sheldon has squashed his sofa cushion awkwardly onto one of the graceful Ancient chairs.  He has a whiteboard on either side of him and a flurry of crumpled paper at his feet.  In a moment, he'll go invite himself to Leonard's slumber party, but for now, he has a universe to save. Above him, Atlantis's two moons hang in the night sky.  At the very edge of their light, every ten minutes or so, a star that is another, distant world flickers and blinks into darkness.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is not an exact match for your prompt, and it's not a fandom I know well, but I tried to capture the voices a little. Hope you enjoy!


End file.
